National Defence Committee on April 21st, 2023

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Kerry Buck]

If you think about food shortages and the impact on food prices around the world and on grain supply, you don't think of it, but Rome FAO, our mission in Rome, would have been actively lobbying at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to talk about how we stabilize food prices and how we help the poor. We would have been doing that through a lot of our development assistance as well.

All arms of Canadian government international intervention, development assistance and diplomacy have to kick in to do that. Then we also have to be equipped to counter Russian disinformation, because as soon as that started, they were out there with disinformation saying that this was the result of X, Y and Z, not the result of what they'd done in Ukraine, so our capacity to diplomatically and in Canada rebut that disinformation and propaganda is really key.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

Ms. Mathyssen and I were exposed to a very sophisticated response to misinformation and disinformation while we were in Taiwan. I think we would both agree that there's much to be learned from how they deal with it.

With that, we have Mr. Kelly for five minutes, please.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you.

Ms. Buck, I would like to take you back to the line of questions that Mr. Bezan was getting to as part of his opening round.

The 2% aspirational goal, if I understand correctly, was set in 2014. There was over a 10-year period to meet that aspirational goal. I'm not sure I could agree that successive governments over a long period of time have not dealt with what was really a specific goal set out in 2014. We had a leak that alleges that our Prime Minister had explicitly, in contradiction of stated policy, said that Canada will not meet that goal.

Are you concerned that this statement undermines our commitment to NATO at a time when this war is explicitly testing the unity of this alliance?

[Kerry Buck]

Just to be clear, my intervention was about underinvestment in defence by successive governments. In a way, it goes back to about the 1970s. It's coming to roost now.

To be fair, in the last two governments, there's been more focus on defence. As I said, the defence policy of “Strong, Secure, Engaged” was the most significant planned increase in defence spending.

Does this have a diplomatic impact on us, the fact that we're getting farther away from the 2% goal? Absolutely. Does it have a reputational impact? It absolutely has a reputational impact, and that can be filled through doing more.

In my heart of hearts, I would like to see a path to 2%, or a path to a path to 2%, if that's possible. I would like to see specific investments in defence, security and diplomacy. I'd love to see an integrated policy. You can't do defence policy in a vacuum, without our foreign policy priorities being set. Have it fully integrated like the U.K. does. Have more investment in CAF people. Have more investment on North American defence—not just NORAD, but air and land, submarines, cyber, and above all, people. We can step up and do more as it's needed.

NATO has to do a lot more now with the war against Ukraine. All allies need to step up.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

You mentioned the announced spending in “Strong, Secure, Engaged”, yet the announcements are not being fulfilled. You mentioned some of the reasons and ways in which those goals are not being met through problems with procurement and personnel.

Can you expand on what needs to change in order to actually fulfill the commitments that were announced? It's easy to announce, but the follow-through is what counts.

[Kerry Buck]

I'm sitting outside of government now. I'm not really privy to the steps that are being taken and the hurdles inside. From outside, part of it is a capacity issue. As I said, if you don't have the people, you can't stabilize the Canadian Armed Forces enough to have the procurement experts, etc.

On procurement, as I said, I'd love to see a review. We've been stumbling in a way on procurement for far too long, and we don't get the stuff.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

We sure have.

I've been given the signal that I have a minute left.

There's one specific item. I was reviewing an order paper answer to a question that was tabled by our colleague Mr. May last June. It said, for example, that there were 62 LAV-II Coyotes that were in repairable condition. They were surplus and repairable. They would need 220 days to be repaired and shipped, according to the statement that was tabled. That was 305 days ago. We have no word or announcement on whether these repairs are happening and whether these vehicles will be sent. This is the type of disconnect between announcing and actually following through with the capacity to do what has been announced.

[Kerry Buck]

There are some areas, like the Leopards. They were decisive in Afghanistan, but have we kept them up since Afghanistan? No. We cut air defence in 2012. There are all sorts of areas.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Kelly.

The final five minutes go to Mr. Sousa.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ambassador, you went through the timelines over the last number of years to provide Russia's justification for invading Crimea and now subsequently all of Ukraine.

Mr. Michalchyshyn, you reminded us that it's actually having the opposite effect. It has actually strengthened NATO's resolve, which is great. It has also created some geopolitical alliances, though, for Russia—economic alliances—and that's also worrisome.

What I'm curious about is the Russian people themselves. Ambassador, you talked a little bit about that. The uprising doesn't seem to be occurring in Russia. We need to see that in order to reaffirm that what Russia is doing is being the aggressor. Of course, they're not hearing that. However, many Russians are dying, as you pointed out, and much of Russia's resources are being utilized to support this war, which then gives me pause with regard to the economic alliances they may be having elsewhere.

We've heard testimony before this committee in regard to Russia's disinformation campaign and we've heard that “the Kremlin's anti-Ukrainian narratives aim to erode public support for Ukraine and to intimidate and dehumanize Canadians of Ukrainian heritage.” That was Marcus Kolga back in February of 2023.

My question then is, to the UCC specifically, what have you observed on this front with respect to Russia's disinformation campaign and how have these efforts evolved over the course of the conflict?

[Orest Zakydalsky]

Thank you.

Unfortunately, the statistics coming out of Russia are that 70% of the Russian population support the war, and despite the reality of the numbers of those who have been killed, we see that the number isn't going down. As you mentioned, they have strong disinformation being put forth by their ambassador to Canada. We don't understand why he is here and regularly featured in Canadian media. He has called us terrible names. He's called many of the people in this room terrible names, and he slurs our community on a daily basis, as he does the Canadian government.

That is baffling to us. I think we need to remember that Russia is Canada's northern neighbour whether we like it or not, and we need to take that very seriously and up our game in terms of what our expectations are with respect to what's coming at us. I think there was some naïveté and some hope that perhaps this could all be resolved in different ways, but we're seeing the reality of it now. Individual Canadians, individual Ukrainian-Canadians, are bearing the brunt of it in terms of the acts of hate and vandalism that are happening across Canada that we're hearing about and documenting every day.

I would love to share with you our social media feed and the slurs that are coming at our community from Russian bots every day. I think it is a serious issue that we as a society might have been naive about.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Ambassador, how do we combat that? What do we do? It's one thing for us to now fight that disinformation within Canada, but what are we doing in terms of propaganda? What are we doing to inform the Russian people as well?

[Kerry Buck]

First, on propaganda, I think that requires a whole-of-society response, and as you said, Mr. Chair, we can learn a lot from countries like Estonia and Taiwan, which sit next to very powerful countries that engage very well in disinformation. They're better at it than we are. Part of it is that they have whole-of-society responses.

In Finland, for instance, they teach kids in school how to recognize disinformation so they can weed out on social media what's false and what's true. We need a better security culture, I think, at all levels—provincial, federal and even municipal sometimes—so that we can understand when our citizens are being attacked by disinformation.

That means civilian investment in cyber and also in building some of what I call the other building blocks of democracy, like independent media, free media, electoral systems, etc. We're pretty good on that front, but we still need to do more.

On the Russian people, there are polls and then there are polls. It's a little dangerous in Russia to answer the wrong way, so I take the polls with a grain of salt, but if you look at some of the more credible polling in Russia, it's showing the same numbers that were just given.

Part of it is that if you've been under that kind of czarist dictator's approach to governing, it takes an awful lot before there's an uprising. There have been uprisings in Russian history, but I don't think that Russians are anywhere near the point of rising up, and the thing is that Vladimir Putin has gotten rid of any of his potential rivals through a series of defenestrations, “suiciding” of people and poisonings.

I won't dare to predict what will happen there.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Sousa.

Unfortunately, that brings our time to an end. I say “unfortunately”, because all of you have been absolutely superb witnesses.

You'll be interested to know that just prior to your witnessing, we adopted the intention to study procurement. Given the testimony that you've all come forward with, we may reach out to you again for your thoughts on it. This process is very exasperating, so we hope to bring some enlightenment.

With that, I'm going to suspend. We will change panels as quickly as we can.

Again, on behalf of the committee members, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I call this meeting back to order.

We have with us Dr. Jack Watling, senior research fellow for land warfare, Royal United Services Institute.

Dr. Watling, thank you for coming.

You're welcome to your first five-minute intervention. We look forward to what you have to say, and then we'll go to rounds of questions.

Thank you, sir.

[Dr. Jack Watling, Senior Research Fellow for Land Warfare, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today.

My background in connection with this topic is that I have been working on the ground in Ukraine throughout the war, essentially in every other month. I've been largely working with the Ukrainian military, conducting assessments.

There are critical points that I want to get across to you in the opening remarks. The first is that the consequences of this conflict should not be and cannot be understated. The outcome of this war will not only determine the future of European security but will also determine the rules by which the international order functions, and whether or not those states that are more powerful are deemed to be able to exert control and influence over their neighbours in spheres of influence.

Second, and perhaps critically, NATO's ability to demonstrate that it can rise to this challenge is not just important in protecting us from Russia and Russian aggression but also in signalling to other potential adversaries whether or not we are able to deliver on our security commitments. If we are not able to rise to this challenge, then we will face serious security threats in other theatres.

When the war started, as was mentioned in the previous session, there were quite a lot of emphatic predictions made. My experience throughout the conflict is that it has never been on a very clear trajectory. We have been working in one direction and then another as we have solved operational problems.

The really important thing to bear in mind there, I think, is that the outcome is absolutely not set or fixed; it is determined by what we do. We have a huge amount of agency collectively in determining whether the Ukrainian armed forces are able to successfully achieve their military objectives or not.

Second is something that I think we have been much weaker on. While we have a clear military strategy at this point, we have a much less coherent political strategy. The reality of the situation is that Ukraine could achieve all of its military objectives on the ground to push Russian forces out of the country and Russia could still blockade Odessa, could still strike Ukrainian cities on a semi-regular basis with long-range missiles, and could keep Ukrainian airspace closed, essentially denying Ukraine's ability to have an economy.

Unless we have a political strategy that forces the Russian government to believe that it will gain more by negotiating in earnest, then there isn't an easy end to this problem. We need to be working very closely as allies in that goal.

I think that brings me to the final point I want to make in my opening remarks, which is that while logistics, the defence industry and our military are at the forefront of this effort, ultimately there are many levers of power that have to be pulled that are not controlled by the military. Canada's decision very recently, along with a number of its allies, to increase enrichment of nuclear fuels is a good example of how bolstering the alliance's energy security is critical to underpinning the political will to continue the struggle.

This is the time when a lot of the talk about processes in inter-agency and intergovernmental departments working well, which has been at the forefront of national defence strategies, is going to be put to the test.

I'm very happy to answer any of your questions on military considerations, which is my area of expertise, and looking at the Russian military in particular. I will conclude my opening remarks there and look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Dr. Watling. Your economy of speech is appreciated. I don't know if it will be reciprocated by my colleagues.

We'll go to six-minute round with Mr. Kelly.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you, Dr. Watling.

Could you give us some specifics about the challenges—or perhaps even the crisis, if that's the right word—around munition productions within the NATO alliance, or at least the accessible industrial capacity of Ukraine and NATO allies?

[Dr. Jack Watling]

Certainly.

The Ukrainians are having to fire approximately 90,000 to 140,000 rounds of 155-millimetre ammunition per month. The United States previously was able to produce fewer than 20,000 rounds per month. It is looking to significantly increase that capacity. However, by the end of the year, in public reporting, we're still looking at a capacity of around 40,000 rounds per month. In the U.K., in public reporting, the entire national stockpile of 155-millimetre ammunition prior to this conflict was lower than 44,000 rounds, and our ability to manufacture 155-millimetre ammunition is at the rate of about 5,000 rounds per year. There are plans to push that to 40,000 rounds per year, but as you can see—and I could go country by country—when you add them up, the entire alliance's capacity is not meeting the requirement for monthly consumption rates of ammunition.

My experience with this conflict is that if you do not have firepower, you cannot manoeuvre. You will be fixed in place and you'll be destroyed. A lack of firepower is a recipe for very high casualties and a sure path to defeat. Therefore, it is very important we generate that industrial capacity.

The fact the United States does have significant stockpiles in reserve means that we do have time to resolve this issue, but it is a complicated problem, because you need to expand production of explosive energetics; you need to expand the ability to cast shells and produce primers; and then you need to be able to handle those explosive energetics and have the facilities to be able to fill those shells and cool the explosive energetics in them. That means that government departments that deal with planning permission, for example, are critical if this is to happen quickly.

There are international supply chain challenges. There are also regulatory challenges that ministries of defence cannot solve by themselves. It's really important that the alliance co-operate to close that gap.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay. How is Canada doing in this? How can Canada be of meaningful assistance? Do you know Canada's capacity for production and what Canada would need to do to increase this production?

[Dr. Jack Watling]

I'm not familiar specifically with the numbers in terms of Canada's production, but I would note that Canada is integral to the U.S. effort to expand production. In the supply chain for U.S. munitions, very often those munitions go back and forth between the U.S. and Canada. That reflects a number of specific manufacturing capabilities that you have, but also Canada's ability to generate raw materials for explosive energetics that other countries don't necessarily have access to. Canada is actually quite important in this role.

I would also commend the work of one of your former ambassadors, Wendy Gilmour, who is an assistant secretary at NATO. She is playing a leading role in trying to cohere these efforts across the alliance, so Canada has made a significant contribution, I think, to the diplomacy to unlock some of these challenges.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

We're about to undertake a procurement study in this committee. Canada has a very long history of astonishingly slow military procurement. That has to change in order to give us the agility to respond to a crisis like this. Are you aware or do you think that Canada, even as part of a North American supply chain, is taking the steps that need to be taken in order to eliminate this gap between expenditure and production that will surely at some point result in the Ukrainian army running out of ammunition if we don't bridge the gap?

[Dr. Jack Watling]

I think there has been a problem across the alliance of many governments, particularly outside of defence, in thinking about this as a peacetime problem and following traditional processes. Certainly in the U.K., we are not seeing a rapid acceleration in process, partly because it does require buy-in from other bits of government. The Ministry of Defence does not own all of the levers to unlock planning permissions for a munitions factory, for example.

It is really important that you have centralized government authority directing all of those other constituents and contributors to this process to make sure there isn't an acceleration in the signing of defence contracts, for example, but no acceleration in the ability to find and set up appropriate facilities to produce more munitions. I've observed that there is a sense of urgency in the ministries of defence around NATO, but very often that doesn't translate across government.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you. I owe you 15 seconds.

Dr. Watling, what I heard about how a 155-millimetre shell is made and the number of times it might cross the border just to be made in North America is maybe an interesting contribution to our study on procurement. If you have other information that you wish to share on that point, that would be informative to us. If you'd forward it to the clerk, that would be helpful.

Madam O'Connell, you have six minutes, please.